Posted
by
timothy
on Thursday April 25, 2013 @05:05PM
from the makes-you-crave-them-fortnightly dept.

alphadogg writes "The Apple Worldwide Developers Conference sold out in just two minutes today, blowing away last year's record of two hours. Tickets went on sale today at 10 a.m. PDT, as was announced yesterday, when Apple said its event would be held June 10-14 at Moscone West in San Francisco. Apple WWDC runs neck-and-neck with the annual Google I/O event in the race for hottest tech show. The Google event, slated for May 15-17 at Moscone Center, sold out in 45 minutes this year. While transferring tickets for WWDC is generally not allowed, an ambitious eBay seller is attempting to get $10K for the $1,600 ticket."

When I recieved the confirmation that I had a set of tickets to this event, I literally creamed my pants. I have heard rumors that Steve Jobs faked his death and will eventually show up to announce a new product, perhaps the Dick Tracy Watch, which would be Apple's greated technological leap.

When I recieved the confirmation that I had a set of tickets to this event, I literally creamed my pants. I have heard rumors that Steve Jobs faked his death and will eventually show up to announce a new product, perhaps the Dick Tracy Watch, which would be Apple's greated technological leap.

You realize most of those attendee's are major companies right? While in the past a lot of "consumers" would manage to get a ticket to this, these days its massively frowned upon and I would venture to say 80-90% of those tickets went to companies looking to send their developers for facetime with the heads of Apples Mac and iOS development teams about issues/concerns/ideas.

The days of jackasses like Violet Blue coming to a developer conference to hob nob when she doesnt know shit about being a developer

I would think that a WorldWide Developer's Conference ticket at $1600 a piece was self explanatory. It would take a pretty big fan boy to purchase a ticket and not be there for information related about upcoming changes to iOS and OS X APIs. If you job involves coding, $1600 is pricey but a legitimate business expense. I think also the keynote is simulcast on the Internet so unless you like spending more than $2000 (airfare, hotel, etc) for an hour address, most interested people would watch the broadcas

Even a small one. $1600 is pretty standard for a conference or even a basic class about database structure or project management. It all depends on what's there. If it's a yearly sales pitch, then yea, that's expensive. But if there's a bunch of people there that are doing crazy new stuff it's worth it just to mingle. Some of the stuff I work on is so proprietary to our industry there's just no info on the net about it, so these conferences can be a goldmine.

You realize most of those attendee's are major companies right? While in the past a lot of "consumers" would manage to get a ticket to this, these days its massively frowned upon and I would venture to say 80-90% of those tickets went to companies looking to send their developers for facetime with the heads of Apples Mac and iOS development teams about issues/concerns/ideas.

The days of jackasses like Violet Blue coming to a developer conference to hob nob when she doesnt know shit about being a developer have long passed when people started to care about app development and iOS.

It's also why Apple has stopped really announcing new products at WWDC because they want the people who work in their ecosystem to benefit, not random press bloggers who simply are there for the new stuff.

And no, it's not just major companies - Apple wants to encourage developers to attend - iOS or OS X, a good chunk of whom are tiny one-man companies but who have just a big a chance of attending and bitching/learning about changes in iOS and OS X.

In short, it's really like Google I/O without the hardware giveaways. It's held for developers to learn and do things better. It's not for Joe Average Fanboy who wants to see the latest shiny. But engaging the developer with upcoming changes means that when the upcoming shiny comes out, developers have already have stuff using the new APIs out of the gate.

Just curious, as an iOS and an OS X dev before that, I've never really seen any reason to go to this -- even when I lived close enough I happened to walk by it on my way to the Whole Foods one year. Is there a lot of opportunity to make sales or schmooze your way into Apple employees' good graces? Otherwise, I'm not sure what the point is if you already know how to use the APIs and don't have a problem reading about upcoming changes online. I do remember them having some freebies and stuff at previous ones,

Just curious, as an iOS and an OS X dev before that, I've never really seen any reason to go to this -- even when I lived close enough I happened to walk by it on my way to the Whole Foods one year. Is there a lot of opportunity to make sales or schmooze your way into Apple employees' good graces? Otherwise, I'm not sure what the point is if you already know how to use the APIs and don't have a problem reading about upcoming changes online. I do remember them having some freebies and stuff at previous ones, but nothing worth the ticket price.

Shhhh! You're not supposed to question the merits of anything with even half this much hype. It crushes the souls of the sheople who paid exhorbitant ticket prices and made travel arrangements and bragged to their buddies that they will be attending.

There they are now, staring saucer-eyed at the Marketing Dept. waiting for the meaning of their lives to be validated. Don't ruin it for them.

The hallway time is the reason to go. Some of the sessions and labs get your in person with the leads of most of the teams and its not unheard of for app developers or companies who have issues to vent them there and see software updates in the future reflect those problems. The sessions they post online for everyone, but the hallway time and closed discussions are absolutely worth the cost of 1-2 tickets, not to mention you are not just talking about Apple here, but Google comes and pretty much every major developer is there.

The hallway time is the reason to go. Some of the sessions and labs get your in person with the leads of most of the teams and its not unheard of for app developers or companies who have issues to vent them there and see software updates in the future reflect those problems. The sessions they post online for everyone, but the hallway time and closed discussions are absolutely worth the cost of 1-2 tickets, not to mention you are not just talking about Apple here, but Google comes and pretty much every major developer is there.

Wow, that's interesting! I never thought folks would pay for permission to gather in hallways! If that's the real reason to go, then you'd think devs would pay far less for some convention space, multiple times a year. Back in my day I just went to SIGs (special interest groups) at HAL-PC (a local computer club). There were regular gatherings where everyone would get together in a huge meet-up too. Why, I remember watching demonstrations of OS/2 Warp at the George R Brown convention center, and Windo

The WWDC isn't really for you to just learn the new APIs. It's about being able to interact with some of the Apple engineers that wrote the new APIs. Like your opinion about how the audio ones are written. Maybe if you asked them in person, they would give you a good reason why it was done that way. Or they even agree with and let you know that they could be changing in the next release. If you impress them enough, you might find a job offer in the future. It's also about networking with other Apple developers, too.

If you want the answer to your question, maybe you should temper your anger. There may be a perfectly valid reason why they are they way they are. Like there is a valid reason why Apple went to sealed batteries for the iPod and iPhone. Now you may disagree that those reasons are good enough but you are entitled to your opinion.

Well you can actually converse with Apple engineers about iOS and OS X with direct questions. Also there are workshops I believe. And you can meet with other developers and network. But if you think that these are not important to you then it's not worth it to you. Most people could learn the APIs on their own. For some developers, these additional benfits are worth it, especially if their company foots the bill.

They give you a track jacket and that is IT. The track jacket does not have pockets. One year the did give away a nice, if simplistic, backpack. Unlike many other conferences there are no vendors, hence no other free stuff.

Otherwise, I'm not sure what the point is if you already know how to use the APIs and don't have a problem reading about upcoming changes online.

There are a few points of value that have diminished. The first is that th

I wouldn't go that far but I am astounded that the interest in attending is at such a fever. I like going because I prefer to know about new aspects of the API and tooling ASAP and can often get some good insights after talking to Apple developers in the labs who work on different frameworks. But some people in the labs (actually many) are asking questions that are way too simple, to my mind a waste of how much they are paying to be there.

You don't think there is a chance you could pick up something through hours of listening to the guys that designed and wrote the APIs? The videos are good and provide a ton of info that you can't get anywhere else. Being there is even better.

(For reference, I remember being an actual Apple Developer, and receiving the monthly CDROMs with amusing titles)

And I remember ars before the op-ed ramblings on copyright and the video game reviews. You can't go back, so we just have the Old Geezer meeting on the second Saturday of every month. Newcomers are not welcome.

And I remember ars before the op-ed ramblings on copyright and the video game reviews. You can't go back, so we just have the Old Geezer meeting on the second Saturday of every month. Newcomers are not welcome.

Then you could at least put up some wheelchair ramps and SPEAK UP SONNY!

I remember watching one of the WWDC keynotes streamed live when I was still an undergrad, so that would be 2002 / 2003. Mostly it was done as a tech demo of their QuickTime Streaming Server (open sourced as Darwin Streaming Server). So, they almost certainly weren't the first to do live streams like this, but they were doing it a long time before 2010.

The session videos are usually available the next week. Occasionally I'll write some app to automate some task on my mac, and I've really enjoyed watching the videos in previous years. Definitely stuff for nerds;)

Having hands that one of my kids once told me resembled bear paws... oversized and clumsy, something about the same size as the Galaxy S3 would be ideal for my purposes, because I've always found the iPhone display to be unusably tiny for anything involving complex interactivity (such as texting, for instance).

I've never actually seen an iPad mini except in photos, so I can't say... I get the impression, however, that the iPad mini may be slightly too large to hold securely in one hand while trying to use like a phone, if such capabilities were added to it. The S3 however, I have held, and I've found to be a very comfortable size.

So why don't I get an S3? Because iOS devices are more relevant to what I do for a living than Android, and I don't want to be bothered owning paying for two cell phones.

Having hands that one of my kids once told me resembled bear paws... oversized and clumsy, something about the same size as the Galaxy S3 would be ideal for my purposes, because I've always found the iPhone display to be unusably tiny for anything involving complex interactivity (such as texting, for instance).

I think thats already available... Have you looked at the Galaxy S3, it sounds like that does what you want?

Having hands that one of my kids once told me resembled bear paws... oversized and clumsy, something about the same size as the Galaxy S3 would be ideal for my purposes, because I've always found the iPhone display to be unusably tiny for anything involving complex interactivity (such as texting, for instance).

Aren't they going to stream all the sessions live on the web to anyone with an Apple Dev ID? I'm not sure what that $1600 buys you. There are probably some hardware and software handouts, but aren't those available by other means as well?

Aren't they going to stream all the sessions live on the web to anyone with an Apple Dev ID? I'm not sure what that $1600 buys you. There are probably some hardware and software handouts, but aren't those available by other means as well?

You get access to Apple engineers, a free concert and a company paid trip to California.

It just says that they're posting videos during the conference, not that it will be live.

IMO, the biggest thing the $1,600 buys you is near-real-time help from Apple engineers to get you past any problems you run into while testing whatever new APIs, new technologies, etc. that they're showing off that year. Bear in mind that a single DTS incident costs $195 (last I checked), and if you get help eight times, you've paid for the cost of your ticket.

If you mean the developer forums, those really aren't support forums. If Quinn or somebody else from Apple happens to know the answer and can explain it quickly, you might get an answer, but it isn't guaranteed. The more complex the question, the less likely you are to get an adequate answer. This is triply true if the problem is specific to your code and isn't easily reproduced with a simple, reduced test case.

At the show, the Apple person can actually look at your app's source code and help you figure

I'll be impressed when they can match ComicCon San Diego, who have a hard time finding a ticket sales service that can stand up to more than a few seconds before it collapses under the load [deadline.com]. The only reason it took 93 minutes to sell out completely was the slow server response times. Not many wet sites can handle 140,000+ people trying to log in at the same time.

I'll be impressed when they can match ComicCon San Diego, who have a hard time finding a ticket sales service that can stand up to more than a few seconds before it collapses under the load. The only reason it took 93 minutes to sell out completely was the slow server response times. Not many wet sites can handle 140,000+ people trying to log in at the same time.

Quite the opposite, really. WWDC sold probably five or six thousand tickets in a little over sixty seconds. That's about a hundred tickets per se

It seems to me without knowing how many tickets of both were sold its pointless to compare how long they took to sell out.

The other question is WHY did Google take longer.

If it was anything like buying a Nexus phone, chances are that they'd have sold out in 30 seconds if their website didn't die under the load. Most likely if you tried to buy a ticket in the first two minutes for Google IO you'd just get an error message, and then you'd keep hitting refresh until you got the message an hour later that they're all sold out.

Or, if it was like the Nexus 4 you'd get the sold-out message after 20 minutes, and then find out that so

chances are that they'd have sold out in 30 seconds if their website didn't die under the load.

Apple's servers also died under the load, just more gracefully (sort of) - the process worked for some people, for others like myself we just saw authentication errors the whole time. In reality I saw the "sold out" page way closer to 20 seconds after I saw the buy button than two minutes. The two minute figure is more like how long it took the stragglers to complete an order that was started in the first two se

Apple went above and beyond the normal process, including law enforcment involvement, for recovering one of their prototypes. Why not just do the same to smite the practice and make an example out of those involved?

That, and if they're good at it, bind the ticket to a nontransferable item that has some worth to it(e.g. a non prepaid credit card that was used to purchase it) as well as whatever ID is already required to enter(such as government issue). $1600 admission definitely can demand such protection

The thing is, it's a weird conference anyway. It's called a Developer conference, but they do major product announcements there too. So the press wants to get a seat, and that's only logical. I don't have a solution, but it's Apple's own doing as well.

then scalpers would stop doing this and ticket sales would go back to reflecting the actual demand for the event.

Ticket sales shouldn't reflect actual demand. Use an auction system so the price reflects real demand. Scalping is a sign your price is too low, cancelling due to lack of sales is a sign your price is too high. But using an auction system solves both problems, and ensures both that the price reflects the actual demand and that the house is always full.

That way, you don't have to introduce retarded and unnecessary restrictions on ticket buyers, such as preventing resale or creating laws against scalpers. It

I agree completely. And Dutch auctions would be perfect for this. Keeps the price consistent across the board, so early purchases don't get cheap tickets while late comers (10 minutes later) pay through the nose.

Would that be such a bad thing? People go to these conferences because there's a real benefit in the tutorials and so on that are there. The cost is intended to reflect this, but apparently it failed: the people attending believe they get a lot more value from it than the cost of attending. The only problem with this approach is that it skews the market in favour of established companies, and Apple wants to encourage new developers. This could be fixed by reserving, say, 10% of the tickets for prizes fo

apk has been doing all the stuff that the 'luser' is being accused of for years, so if the person who wrote this is actually apk, pull your head in... if you can't take it don't (continue even now to) dish it out

if it's someone impersonating apk, get a life dude... at least impersonate someone noteworthy like steve jobs, linus torvalds, or even barack obama...